NASA's Juno spacecraft listens to the sound of the magnetic field of one of Jupiter's moons

Juno will allow us to take a giant step forward in understanding how the giant planets formed and the role these giants played in assembling the rest of the solar system.

The wave instrument installed on the Juno Spacecraft launched by NASA to Jupiter - which picks up radio-magnetic waves produced in the magnetosphere of this planet - captured data on those emissions, and their frequency was then converted to create A 50-second audio clip of data collected during the mission's passage near Ganymede - one of Jupiter's moons - on June 7.

The Juno mission was mainly aimed at understanding the origin and evolution of the planet. Under the dense cloud cover Jupiter holds the secrets of the basic processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation, and as a prime example of a giant planet Jupiter can also provide important knowledge for understanding planetary systems being discovered around other stars.

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Ganymede's voices

The audio clip captured as Juno passed close to Ganymede was one of the topics that mission scientists shared at the autumn meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

According to the statement published by NASA on December 17, these sounds and magnetic fields, and the comparison between Jupiter and Earth's oceans and atmospheres, were discussed during the session held on the Juno mission.

"This audio clip is exciting enough to make you feel as if you were on board Juno as it passed Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades," says Scott Bolton, Juno principal researcher at the Southwest Research Institute. The sudden change and high frequencies in the middle of the recording, which represents the entry into a different region in Ganymede's magnetosphere."

The process of detailed analysis and modeling of the wave data is still underway, and William Court of the University of Iowa, USA - an assistant researcher in the wave analysis - said, "It is likely that the change in frequency shortly after the greatest approach is caused by the transition from the dark side to the bright side of Ganymede." .

At the time of Juno's closest approach to Ganymede - during the 34th mission trip around Jupiter - the spacecraft was 1,038 km from the surface of the moon and was traveling at a relative speed of 67,000 km per hour.

Jupiter's magnetic field

The most detailed map ever of Jupiter's magnetic field was also an output of Juno's flight, which was presented by Jack Conerney of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the principal investigator for the Juno magnetometer and the mission's deputy principal investigator.

The team collected the map from data from 32 cycles during the Juno mission, and it provides new insights into the gas giant's mysterious Great Blue Spot, a magnetic anomaly at the planet's equator.

Juno's data indicate a change in the gas giant's magnetic field, and that the Great Blue Spot is drifting eastward at two inches per second relative to the rest of Jupiter's interior, orbiting the planet in about 350 years.

By contrast, the Great Red Spot (the atmospheric cyclone south of Jupiter's equator) drifts west at relatively rapid strides, orbiting the planet in about 4½ years.

Additionally, the new map shows that Jupiter's zonal winds (the jet streams that run from east to west and west to east, giving Jupiter its distinctive appearance) are breaking up the Great Blue Spot, meaning that zonal winds measured at the planet's surface reach to the bottom of the planet.

This new map also allows Juno scientists to make comparisons with the Earth’s magnetic field, and the data indicates that the dynamo effect (the mechanism by which a celestial body generates a magnetic field) in the interior of Jupiter occurs in metallic hydrogen under a layer of “helium”, and the data collected by Juno may reveal During her mission extended secrets of the influence of the dynamo, not only on Jupiter but also on other planets, including Earth.

Juno's waves

The wave instrument measures radio waves and plasma in Jupiter's magnetosphere, which helps us understand the interactions between the planet's magnetic field and its atmosphere and magnetosphere. The waves also pay special attention to activity associated with the aurora borealis.

Jupiter's magnetosphere is a giant bubble created by the planet's magnetic field that traps plasma, which is an electrically charged gas, and the activity within this plasma that fills the magnetosphere causes waves that can only be detected by an instrument such as Juno's wave instrument.

And because the plasma conducts electricity, it acts like a giant electric circuit and connects one region to another, and thus activity can be felt on one end of the magnetosphere in another place, allowing Juno to observe the processes that occur in this entire giant region of space around Jupiter, as radio waves and plasma move through Space around both the giant and the exoplanets, and previous missions were equipped with similar instruments.

The Juno wave instrument consists of two sensors, one of which detects the electrical component of radio waves and plasma, while the other is sensitive to the magnetic component of plasma waves. Similar to the rabbit ear antennas that were common in television sets.

The magnetic antenna - called the magnetic search coil - consists of a coil of fine wire wrapped 10,000 times around a 15-centimeter long core. The search coil measures magnetic fluctuations in the sound frequency range.

Juno will allow us to take a giant step forward in our understanding of how giant planets formed and the role these giants played in assembling the rest of the solar system.